M.Ravel and Japan #4 Three Mysterious Foxtrots

Previously we looked into the friendship between Ravel and a Japanese man Jirohatchi Satsuma. I mentioned a little story about the missing Foxtrot which Ravel composed for Satsuma. In this blog, I will focus on the mysterious triangle of three Foxtrots. 

The first Foxtrot is the one Ravel composed for Satsuma, and the sheet music is missing as we know from the last post. I assume it could have been written after Satsuma’s and Ravel’s friendship began in the spring of 1924, and probably before the completion of Ravel’s opera “L'enfant et les sortilèges”. It could also be something like a draft of the “5 o’clock Foxtrot” in the opera, or it could not be, since there is no evidence I cannot be certain about this. 

The second Foxtrot is the “5 o’clock Foxtrot” in L'enfant et les sortilèges in which two teacups sing in odd English, Chinese and Japanese. Remarkably, this piece was originally not a Foxtrot by two teacups, but bourrée by Auvergne cups in Colette's script. Ravel insisted on changing it to the Foxtrot with the two Chinese cups. He finished composing the entire opera in the end of 1924 and in March 1925 the premier took the place. 

From 7:32 is the 5 o’clock foxtrot.

As I promised in the last blog, here, I will explain who the mysterious Sessue Hayakawa is, whose name appears randomly in the lyrics of the 5 o’clock Foxtrot. The Japanese actor based in America, Sessue Hayakawa was as famous as Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks around the 1920s. He was considered as one of the first male sex symbols in Hollywood because of his “bloody handsome” look. Japanese researcher Eiko Kasaba points out that the two Japanese words “Harakiri” and “Sessue Hayakawa” in the 5 o’clock Foxtrot came from the Hollywood movie “Hara-kiri” in 1917. Hayakawa came to France to play a role in “la Bataille” before Ravel completed his L'enfant et les sortilèges, so it is possible that Ravel got to know him through the movie. I already had a suspicion that these two words are used without any kind of artistic thoughts behind them, and after knowing the story about Hayakawa, now I am certain the 5 o’clock Foxtrot has nothing to do with Japonisme. 

Sessue Hayakawa

I will learn the piece and record it…

The third Foxtrot is not so well known. It is the piano arrangement of Ravel’s “5 o’clock Foxtrot” by the French pianist Henri Gil-Marchex. As I wrote in the last blog, he was one of the closest friends of Ravel in the 1920s. Surprisingly, the arranged version of the 5 o’clock Foxtrot was premiered in Japan in 1925 during the tour of Gil-Marchex in Japan which was organized by Satsuma. Ravel was “particularly delighted to learn of the marked success...of Gil-Marchex’s  successful concert tour in Japan” according to Orenstein’s book “Ravel, Man and Musician”.

The tour was indeed successful, and from the view of myself being a Japanese musician, I must write here that it was a great enlightenment for Japanese people to listen to French music at that time. The concert tour has changed the Japanese music world and inspired many Japanese intellectuals since German music was dominating the Japanese music world then. Interestingly, Gil-Marchex himself points out the similarity between French composition and the great Japanese ukiyoe  in his essay for the French newspaper L’Intransigeant.

C'est pour sa retenue, son émotion mesurée, son esprit, sa sensibilité aux détails concrets de la vie que la musique française, ancienne et moderne, convient aux Japonais. Ce qui leur platt, c'est son côté ≪bibelot≫ nos vieilles compositions de Lulli, Rameau, Couperin —Bourrée des Niais de Sologne, Les bar-ricades mystérieuses, le Bavolet flottant, le Coucou — par leur titre et leur rythme rappellent aux Japonais les dessins d'Hokusai ou d'Hiroshigé. Plus près de nous, leurs favoris sont Ravel et Debussy, toujours pour les mêmes raisons. Poissons d'or, La Cathédrale engloutie, Reflets dans l'eau, Loideronnette impératrice des pagodes, autant de titres qui les sensibilisent sur notre musique et la leur font aimer. (Gil-Marchex, L'art francais en extrème-orient, Un ambassadeur de la musique à Tokio, 1931)

(Translation: It's for its decency, its contained emotion, its spirit, its sensibility for concrete details for life that French music, ancient and modern, please Japanese. What Japanese like is its "archaic" aspect. Our old compositions of Lully, Rameau, Couperin Bourrée des Niais de Sologne Les barricades mystérieuses, le Bavolet flottant, le Coucou — by their titles and rhythms recall the Japanese of Hokusai and Hiroshige's drawings. Closer to us, their favorites are Debussy and Ravel, for the same reasons. Poissons d'Or, La Cathédrale engloutie, Reflets dans l'eau, Loideronnette impératrice des pagodes, such titles which make them sensible to our music and make them like it.)

Gil-Marchex was not only a trusted pianist of Ravel, but also became a passionate Japonisan (maybe the word is too old for describing someone in the 1920s) through his four trips to Japan  between 1925-1937. He even composed music which was inspired by Japanese art and wrote nine essays and articles on Japanese art. During this very time in the 1920s, he was one of the closest persons to Ravel. 

I hope the following diagram will make you understand the situation around Ravel in the 1920s a bit clearer.

This is the summarty of the previous post and this post.

So my conclusion, with a little dose of speculation, is that the Foxtrot for Satsuma (the missing one, short music and written for the piano) might have been the draft for the 5 o’clock Foxtrot in L'enfant et les sortilèges. It likely was composed in 1924 around the time when Satsuma and Ravel started their friendship. Then, the 5 o’clock Foxtrot in L'enfant et les sortilèges was demanded to be changed from Auvergne style and, because of his interest in Japan, Ravel inserted some Japanese words into the piece. Gil-Marchex, probably knowing how the 5 o’clock Foxtrot was composed, dared to choose the 5 o’clock foxtrot among many other beautiful orchestrations of Ravel and arranged it for the piano and played it for the premiere in Japan. Would any of the Japanese audience at that concert have known what connected these three men in the 1920s behind the piece “5 o’clock foxtrot”...?

In the next post, I will probably talk about the stories of Satsuma and Ravel hidden to Europeans in Satsuma’s interview and publications in Japan. Blog post #2 should be updated soon, with more information on identified Japanese paintings.